Many portable electronic devices such as cellular phones, digital cameras/camcorders, personal digital assistants, laptop computers and video games operate on batteries. During periods of inactivity the device may not perform processing operations and may be placed in a power-down or standby power mode to conserve power. Power provided to a portion of the logic within the electronic device may be turned off in a low power standby power mode. However, presence of leakage current during the standby power mode represents a challenge for designing portable, battery operated devices. Data retention circuits such as flip-flops and/or latches within the device may be used to store state information for later use prior to the device entering the standby power mode. The data retention latch, which may also be referred to as a shadow latch or a balloon latch, is typically powered by a separate ‘always on’ power supply.
A known technique for reducing leakage current during periods of inactivity utilizes multi-threshold CMOS (MTCMOS) technology to implement the shadow latch. In this approach, the shadow latch utilizes thick gate oxide transistors and/or high threshold voltage (Vt) transistors to reduce the leakage current in standby power mode. The shadow latch is typically detached from the rest of the circuit during normal operation (e.g., during an active power mode) to maintain system performance. To retain data in a ‘master-slave’ flip-flop topology, a third latch, e.g., the shadow latch, may be added to the master latch and the slave latch for the data retention. In other cases, the slave latch may be configured to operate as the retention latch during low power operation. However, some power is still required to retain the saved state. For example, see U.S. Pat. No. 7,639,056, “Ultra Low Area Overhead Retention Flip-Flop for Power-Down Applications”, which is incorporated by reference herein.
System on Chip (SoC) is a concept that has been around for a long time; the basic approach is to integrate more and more functionality into a given device. This integration can take the form of either hardware or solution software. Performance gains are traditionally achieved by increased clock rates and more advanced process nodes. Many SoC designs pair a microprocessor core, or multiple cores, with various peripheral devices and memory circuits.
Energy harvesting, also known as power harvesting or energy scavenging, is the process by which energy is derived from external sources, captured, and stored for small, wireless autonomous devices, such as those used in wearable electronics and wireless sensor networks. Harvested energy may be derived from various sources, such as: solar power, thermal energy, wind energy, salinity gradients, and kinetic energy, etc. However, typical energy harvesters provide a very small amount of power for low-energy electronics. The energy source for energy harvesters is present as ambient background and is available for use. For example, temperature gradients exist from the operation of a combustion engine, and in urban areas, there is a large amount of electromagnetic energy in the environment because of radio and television broadcasting, etc.
Skilled artisans will appreciate that elements in the figures are illustrated for simplicity and clarity and have not necessarily been drawn to scale. For example, the dimensions and/or relative positioning of some of the elements in the figures may be exaggerated relative to other elements to help to improve understanding of various embodiments of the present invention. Also, common but well-understood elements that are useful or necessary in a commercially feasible embodiment are often not depicted in order to facilitate a less obstructed view of these various embodiments. It will further be appreciated that certain actions and/or steps may be described or depicted in a particular order of occurrence while those skilled in the art will understand that such specificity with respect to sequence is not actually required. It will also be understood that the terms and expressions used herein have the ordinary technical meaning as is accorded to such terms and expressions by persons skilled in the technical field as set forth above except where different specific meanings have otherwise been set forth herein.